At the beginning of 2019, the ACNV (Association of Nonviolent Communication) of Spain invited me to facilitate a series of learning events on restorative circles in Spain. In June this resulted in two training events (one in Madrid and one…
Ayucucho region of Peru Peru experienced 20 years of violence between 1980 -2000 in which nearly 70,000 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were displaced and left homeless. Although much time has passed since this ‘time of…
“I yo uza kwimenya nanje ukamenya ntuba waranyishe.” …
A growing challenge in Nigeria is a conflict between nomadic Fulani herders and local farmers. Growing population pressure, gradual creep a desertification from the Sahara Desert in the north, and flooding and loss of land in the south have resulted…
Restorative Circles: Community Empowered to Walk Toward Their Conflicts
At 6 A.M. Anton awakens with a start, hearing his six-year-old son crying out in fear. Looking into the street, Anton sees twelve tanks rumbling past their apartment building. The unpredictable appearance of tanks is just one of the challenges living 15 kilometers from a war zone. Unidentified, heavily armed masked gunmen patrol the streets, their vicious-looking dogs snarling at their feet. The regional water system has been destroyed, leaving only one open-pit well to supply the entire town. This is life for civilians along the war-front in eastern Ukraine as the conflict drags on.
What happens when farmers and herders clash over use of shared land? My Nigerian colleagues and I facilitated a dialogue between these two groups from Bole and surrounding communities (in Adamawa State) from September 28 to September 30, 2017.
The small town of Novohrodivka, 15 km from the warfront (ATO) had been experiencing conflict between the local Russian-speaking residents of the town and the Ukrainian army stationed there.
We were invited to support dialogue between these two groups. Anton, a colleague who was a participant in the dialogue facilitation training arranged by Foundations for Freedom, had made connections both with the leaders from a local town and with the commander of the army brigade. He met with each of them separately and they each agreed that they would like support to have a dialogue to try to reframe their relationship.